


Come On Darling, Run With Me

by chezvous



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:26:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chezvous/pseuds/chezvous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur has always been Cobb's man, but Eames--Eames belonged to Mal first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come On Darling, Run With Me

**Author's Note:**

> Title and cut text from Eisley's "Marsh King's Daughter."
> 
> My favorite fearsome foursome. There's some Arthur/Eames at the end, but it's more...the slightest of suggestions? Haha, sorry for anyone who was expecting more. Next time, promise.

It’s always been a little funny to Mal, how clearly you can see the lines drawn between them. So she and Dom are married; that makes no difference. When there is a disagreement, it pits Arthur and Dom against Mal and Eames every single time. 

Dom, bless his soul, loves her and she loves him more than she could ever express, but he will never quite understand her in the way that Eames does. This is not Dom’s fault—in fact, sometimes Mal marvels that it makes her love him all the more. One should never understand the love of their life completely, for that would take all the excitement out of the discovery, days or months or years later, of finding something new to cherish.

Arthur has always been Arthur—Dom tried calling him ‘Artie’ once, when they first started working together, because Arthur had been so, so young and his name somehow seemed too big for him, but without getting into any gruesome detail, it never quite took.

Eames though, is Eames only in a professional capacity. When they’re alone, when Dom is out to collect bits and pieces for the newest world he is about to build and Arthur is trailing the mark so he can grid out the dissonance of her life into neat, neat lines, she and Eames exchange a look and a grin, grab their coats from behind the backs of their desk chairs, and he takes her out for ice cream.

She calls him Thomas, then, Tom or Tommy when she’s excited, as they stroll arm and arm down the winding streets of Aix, avoiding the bigger boulevards in favor of the cobblestone pathways so narrow sometimes that their shoulders brush window boxes full of pansies and buttercups as they pass.

The job has been too consuming lately—this is something they understand. Eames is a year past the age where earnestness makes up for too-late nights and too-early mornings (an age that Arthur is likely to stubbornly refuse to grow out of) and Mal places a hand on her swelling belly because there is more than one way of being consumed and if she must choose a method, she would much prefer this one.

They find a bench at the edge of a small town square and he pretends to help her sit down because Eames is a gentleman and Mal would find a way to put pepper in his pants if he ever thought that being pregnant meant she could no longer sit down by herself. They watch the people of Aix go about their business, licking their ice cream cones (chocolate for her and strawberry for him, the exact same flavors they used to get at the gelato parlor on their university campus when they were but poor yet honest academics).

“Arthur will have to be made godfather, of course,” says Mal gradually, between one careful lick around the circumference of the cone to catch all the drips. “When the baby is born.”

Eames snorts. “Something tells me that Arthur wouldn’t know what to do with a baby if it came with an instruction manual.”

“Oh, and you’re so much better, are you?” She laughs, nudges his shoulder with hers. “I won’t have you teaching my child how to pick pockets before she can even walk.”

“Why, my dear Mallorie,” He catches her hand, the one that’s holding the cone, and pulls it to his mouth, kissing the inside of her wrist in a gesture that’s supposed to be charming and irresistible but makes Mal roll her eyes with fondness, having seen too many other women fall for it in the past to be affected. That, and the knowledge that she wasn’t born with the equipment to interest him is just the nail in the coffin. Eames smirks, rolling out his syllables into an exaggerated version of his accent. “You think so little of me.”

“ _Non_ , I think it is you who needs to think less of himself—” Mal cuts off with a delighted shriek as he swipes his tongue across her ice cream scoop, taking a bite out of the cone in the process. “Tommy! Oh, you  _devil_!” She tugs her hand free and cradles it as best as she can protectively to her chest, refusing to be placated until he relents and gives her the rest of his cone to finish (“But only because you’re eating for two now,” He insists, as if the exact same thing didn’t happen ten years ago). 

She leans against his shoulder when she’s done, licking the last remnants of melted strawberry ice cream off of her fingers, content. Of course, that’s when her mobile rings, a distinctive eight-bit rendition of “Swan Lake” that tells her it’s Dom. She sighs and pulls it out of her purse.

“Ah, the husband is home early.”

“What will his vivid imagination tell him has happened to me this time?”

“That you’ve been kidnapped and I am lying beaten and bloody, dying in an alleyway somewhere, undoubtedly.”

Mal presses the ‘answer’ button and lifts the phone to her ear. “Dom?”

“Mal?” comes Dom’s panicked voice, slightly crackly from the poor reception, “Is that you? Are you alright?”

“Yes, Dom, I’m fine.”

“Where are you? Is Eames with you? Are you okay, is the baby okay?”

“ _Dom_!” Arthur’s voice, annoyed, in the background. “ _Didn’t I tell you they would be fine? She is not kidnapped or dying, the baby is fine, and for god’s sake, Eames is not bleeding in an alleyway somewhere. I told you not to overreact_!”

“Where are you?”

Mal shakes her head and hands the phone to Eames with a ‘ _please talk to him, Thomas, I cannot deal with him when he is like this_ ’ look.

“Cobb, it’s been all of twenty minutes and—” Eames starts off smoothly, then sputters, incredulous, “—yes,  _of bloody course_  this is Eames. Put—just put Arthur on the phone. You are impossible to deal with when you are like this.” 

Mal watches with her chin propped on her hand as Eames says, “Hello? Yes, Arthur, darling, it’s me—” and is interrupted again by the sound of Arthur speaking very quickly and tersely, something about how they both should have known better, how they knew that Dom would worry and that they were acting irresponsibly on purpose and what if they were somehow made by the mark and that would blow almost a month’s worth of work and then they probably couldn’t even afford to get out of the country (even though France is not, by far, the worst country to be stuck in for an extended period of time, but they both let that one slide since Arthur is on a roll) and Eames hates the way the French do tea so he probably wouldn’t survive past the month anyway and—

Arthur has to take a breath eventually and Eames jumps at the chance. “Yes, alright, point taken, we’ll be back in ten minutes. Lovely to speak to you too, see you soon!” He shuts the phone, cutting off Arthur’s indignant squawk.

He and Mal stare at each other for a moment before bursting into laughter so loud it startles the pigeons pecking at their feet, Mal clutching his arm to steady herself until they can finally calm down enough to suck in deep breaths of air.

“Well, I guess we better be getting back.” Eames gives her a sideways smile and they stand up together, dusting each other off before linking arms again. “Really, one of these days he must learn to stop worrying so much. Are you sure you still want him to be the godfather?”

“Are  _you_  still in love with him?” Eames only sticks his tongue out at her petulantly and she grins, knowing she’s won. “Come on, then. We’ll take some vanilla ice cream back to Dom, see if he cannot find it in his heart to forgive us then.”

“For being the world’s best Architect, he’s not exactly the most imaginative when it comes to ice cream flavors.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Mal smiles slyly, raising onto her toes to kiss Eames’ cheek as they start back down the narrow streets, “He makes up for it in other ways.”

Eames shrugs, mock rueful. “I suppose that’s what got us into this whole messy baby business in the first place, isn’t it?”


End file.
